“Do something that forces you to come face-t0-face with your own power.”

-Lauren Chava Rose

Who I Am:

I am a writer and a therapist.

I live life on my own terms.

I fought hard to get here.

Those of us who escape must tell our stories.

“I was twenty-five years old when I decided to return to the one place I never wanted to live again: my hometown. I had left Chicago at the age of eighteen, and though I had been home sporadically for holidays and summer breaks, I had done my best to get as far away from my home as possible. I had spent seven years gallivanting all over the place. Life had taken me from Michigan to Cape Town to Washington, DC. But the harder I’d tried to run away, the harder I’d seemed to run headfirst into the most wounded parts of myself. The parts who had seen too much.”

- Excerpt from The Heart Word: How I Lost It All and Found Myself

For years, I believed that safety only existed for other people. That’s because I was born into a family that I constantly felt the need to flee. As a result, safety was a construct. It was elusive. It was always just out of reach. But one day, something changed. I knew that my life would never be mine unless I freed myself. So I walked away from everything I knew.

This is where my story begins.